𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐄 - j. grace, ocxoc ¹ ✓

xv. keep one eye open !

XV. KAEN OKAYAMA !
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keep one eye open

          Only a matter of seconds went by the time Kaen left with Leo before he wished he stayed back with his sister. His sister was hurt! Why did he go with a random guy that he barely knew? If there was a worst brother award he earned it. The feeling of wanting to run back only got worse when they found the dragon had landed on the toilets.

Of all the places to crash, a line of Porta-Potties would not have been his first choice. A dozen of the blue plastic boxes had been set up in the factory yard, and Festus had flattened them all. Fortunately, they hadn't been used in a long time, and the fireball from the crash incinerated most of the contents; but still, there were some pretty gross chemicals leaking out of the wreckage. Leo and Kaen had to pick their way through and try not to breathe through their nose. Heavy snow was coming down, but the dragon's hide was still steaming hot. Kaen stayed farther away from it but somehow, the burning hot metal didn't seem to bother Leo.

Kaen began to suspect why Leo acted so weird. First, he clearly lied about how he fixed Festus up. The dragon didn't listen to just anyone, it was Charles' life and soul. And now Leo was walking over a hot dragon with no burns or jumping from the feeling . . . Kaen was suspicious.

After a few minutes climbing over Festus's inanimate body, Kaen started to get irritated. The dragon looked perfectly fine. Yes, it had fallen out of the sky and landed with a big ka- boom, but its body wasn't even dented. Leo told him the fireball had apparently come from built up gasses inside the toilet units, not from the dragon itself. Festus's wings were intact. Nothing seemed broken. There was no reason it should have stopped.

"Not my fault," he muttered. "Festus, you're making me look bad." Then he opened the control panel on the dragon's head, and Leo slouched over. "Oh, Festus, what the heck? The wiring is frozen over!"

"But you said he was fine yesterday?" Kaen crossed his arms. If he was risking his life by flying on a dragon just to "beware the earth", he rather die in his home territory than in the sky.

The ice had caused the wiring to overload and char the control disk. Kaen and Leo couldn't see any reason that would've happened. Sure, the dragon was old, but still, it didn't make sense.

Khione instantly came to Kaen's mind.

Leo explained he could replace the wires but that wasn't the problem. But the charred control disk was not good. The Greek letters and pictures carved around the edges, which probably held all kinds of magic, were blurred and blackened.

"It's the one thing I can't replace or fix," Leo mumbled. He looked ashamed that he didn't have the answer, and Kaen couldn't help but feel bad. The one piece of hardware Leo couldn't figure out.

"Right," Leo muttered, brushing the snow off his shoulders. "Gimme a nylon bristle detail brush, some nitrile gloves, and maybe a can of that aerosol cleaning solvent."

Kaen thought he was talking to him and looked around for things he didn't know the name for. Then it dawned on him that he was talking to the tool belt. He hated the idea of the tool belt being more useful than him. The tool belt obliged. Leo smiled as he pulled out the supplies. He began cleaning off the control disk. While he worked, snow collected on the cooling dragon.

He hesitantly turned to Kaen, who was sitting on the ground watching everything. Leo seemed hesitant to share something, examining Kaen trying to decide if he was trustworthy enough to know.

"Don't freak out," he cautiously said to him. Kaen nodded and Leo summoned a ball of fire in his hand. Kaen jumped to his feet and cursed in surprise, Leo nervously eyeing him as he melted it away. "I don't want to talk about it now if that's okay."